Nancy Pelosi has announced that she will revive the “Select Committee on Climate Change that was disbanded when the GOP took over Congress in 2010. The radical justice Democrats are pushing for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to be a member, but Pelosi slyly refused to give the committee subpoena power and is preventing it from writing any legislation.

She also named Rep. Kathy Castor as chair. Castor is not a member of the Progressive Caucus and has actually accepted donations from (gasp) fossil fuel companies. The Justice Democrats have insisted that only those members who did not accept donations from energy companies be allowed to join the committee.

Pelosi said, when appointing Castor as chair:

“She will bring great experience, energy and urgency to the existential threat of the climate crisis. This committee will be critical to the entire Congress’s mission to respond to the urgency of this threat, while creating the good-paying, green jobs of the future. “

That didn’t go over well with the Justice Democrats who promptly issued a press release questioning the commitment of Pelosi and the Democrat leadership.

It’s extremely disappointing that the current proposal may be even weaker than Pelosi’s previous Select Committee on climate in 2007. Democratic leadership still has time to create a Select Committee on a Green New Deal and support a serious proposal that holds fossil fuel billionaires accountable and is based on what science demands.

The party of the resistance can’t take the path of least resistance on climate and inequality.

Democrats will automatically support anything with “New Deal” in the wording. They still worship FDR.

Ocasio-Cortez has received an extraordinary amount of media attention, which I think Democrats are interpreting as support. They may come to regret that. Conservatives get a kick out of the way that every time she opens her mouth, the stupidity flows out. Chris Buskirk of American Greatness wrote a recent piece suggesting that she is not stupid at all, it’s just that most everything she believes is just plain wrong, and of course it is.

The climate folk never seem to do their homework. By that I mean they do not study up on the qualifications of the scientists, what they are actually saying, they just accept the latest buzz-words, and call the people who suggest they are mistaken “Deniers” and other bad words. Surely you have noticed that you are not allowed to disagree with a Democrat.

I think it was Jerry Brown who just pontificated about climate alarmism being “settled science.” Sorry, science is never “settled.” It is subject to constant study and attempts to replicate others’ conclusions. Al Gore went on at great length about the rising of the oceans, until he made a bundle with his alarmist movie, then he promptly bought an oceanside condominium on San Francisco Bay. Both tide gauge sea level and satellite altimetry show that the current amount of sea level change is about 3 millimeters a year, and that may be more because of land subsidence than actual sea level rise. Three millimeters is about the size of the lower-case letter ‘l’ in the awkwardly small type on this website.

Democrats are all excited about the Green New Deal, which is just socialism, but I repeat myself. They are so concerned about the horrors of carbon dioxide that they want to switch to renewables. Again, they haven’t done their homework. Wind is too intermittent to be a dependable source of energy, and solar energy is too diffuse, and there are clouds moving across the sky all the time. Occasio-Cortez thinks we have 5 years and we’re done for, and she expects New York to be underwater all too soon. So If she wants lots of new nuclear plants to be built, our society might not grind to a halt.

And then there’s the problem of where you get your science. Much of the current science comes not from observations of the real world, but from computer simulations in university labs. The problem is that there were a lot of things they didn’t have specific information for, so they put in estimates, and some intelligent guesswork, and a few assumptions, and so there you go.

I put a lot of emphasis on “doing your homework”– by that I mean that if you are going to be a citizen and a voter, you have an obligation to try hard to be informed. Doesn’t mean that we’re going to know it all, but we need to try – especially because Democrats feel no such obligation, and there are a lot of Ocasio-Cortez’s out there.

French President Emanuelle Macron announced in a speech that nationalism was treason, and ignited a huge fuss in France with Frenchmen in yellow vests protesting and rioting and generally tearing the place apart. It’s not known how long he will survive as president.

Those who are greedy for more power may yearn for larger venues, a world government may seem viable, but you have to learn to manage the smaller organizations first. If you have observed the European Union at work it’s obvious, if not, make the effort to do so.

The findings reveal, for example, that eight out of 10 of all U.S. voters — 79 percent — say the U.S. needs secure borders; 93 percent of Republicans, 80 percent of independents and 68 percent of Democrats agree with that.

Another 79 percent of voters overall say immigration priorities should be granted on a person’s “ability to contribute to America”; 87 percent of Republicans, 79 percent of independents and 72 percent of Democrats agree.

Meanwhile, 68 percent overall oppose a lottery-based immigration system which is meant to ensure “greater diversity”: in the U.S.; 78 percent of Republicans, 65 percent of independents and 62 percent of Democrats agree.

According to the most recent analysis by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), one illegal immigrant living in America today costs U.S. citizen taxpayers about $8,075. In total illegal aliens cost American taxpayers $116 billion annually. This number is predictably disputed by the media and the Democrats, but even using conservative estimates compiled five years ago, Heritage found that illegal immigrant households imposed a net fiscal burden of around $54.5 billion a year (benefits received minus taxes paid). The funding Trump is requesting is about 10% of the annual cost of the amount taxpayers pay to provide services for illegal immigrants.

Democrats and the media continually complain that “walls don’t work” but even the slightest investigation proves them wrong on that one. Walls work every time. Doesn’t mean they are perfect, but they work well enough to significantly reduce the illegal population.

One of the most obvious objections to the Democrat’s current protestations, is that not long ago, when they were in charge, they were claiming the exact opposite position. See here, and here, and here. The Democrats’ position is entirely based, not on principle, but on resistance to anything Trump. As they occasionally admit, they don’t have any principles, only the propaganda of the moment handed down from their propaganda shop. Schumer and Pelosi inadvertently proved that with identical twitter posts.

Germany’s Angela Merkel has finally clarified the argument of our day. She has proclaimed that “nation states must today be prepared to give up their sovereignty.” She told an audience in Berlin that sovereign nation states must not listen to the will of their citizens when it comes to questions of immigration, borders, or even sovereignty.

“In an orderly fashion of course,” Merkel joked, attempting to lighten the mood. But Merkel has always had a tin ear for comedy and she soon launched into a dark speech condemning those in her own party who think Germany should have listened to the will of its citizens and refused to sign the controversial UN migration pact:

“There were [politicians] who believed that they could decide when these agreements are no longer valid because they are representing The People”.

“[But] the people are individuals who are living in a country, they are not a group who define themselves as the [German] people,” she stressed.

She has apparently not noticed the reaction of the French people to President Emmanuel Macron’ Remembrance Day speech that “patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism [because] nationalism is treason.” That got the deeply unpopular Macron the whole of France broken out in riots by people in yellow jackets. Macron told the Bundestag that France and Germany should be at the center of the emerging New World Order.

What New World Order? A fairly short period when Germany has refrained from invading France? A European continent foolishly trying to absorb millions of Islamic migrants who, if they are true believers, believe that anyone not accepting the rule of Islam must be killed. Angela Merkel is entirely responsible for the invasion of migrants, who will turn Europe Islamic within a few decades. High birthrates for the migrants low birthrate for the native Europeans. The UN is a remarkably ineffective organization. Families can’t even get along. Why do people keep coming up with this idea of a new world order? Not going to happen. But then one might ask why we have such a hard time selling free market capitalism to other countries? The general secretary of the IPCC has stated that their aim is to remove the threat of capitalism from the world without any understanding of the role of free market capitalism in raising the wealth and well-being of its people. Seems to be located in the part of the brain of those in power, that is confident that all would be well if the rest of the world would just do what they recommend.

Angela Merkel is retiring, but turning things over to another woman who shares her ideas. We’ll see how that works out. At least they aren’t up for invading France again at present.

Victor Davis Hanson took on the Democrat rejection of a border wall under the headline “Dems Hate The Border Wall Because They Know It Will Work.”

There was likely never going to be “comprehensive immigration reform” or any deal amnestying the DACA recipients in exchange for building the wall. Democrats in the present political landscape will not consent to a wall. For them, a successful border wall is now considered bad politics in almost every manner imaginable.

Yet 12 years ago, Congress, with broad bipartisan support, passed the Security Fence of Act of 2006. The bill was signed into law by then-President George W. Bush to overwhelming public applause. The stopgap legislation led to some 650 miles of a mostly inexpensive steel fence while still leaving about two-thirds of the 1,950-mile border unfenced.

The Center for Immigration Studies explains the way illegal’s travel is facilitated by official government policy in Costa Rica and Panama. When they have made their way through the Darien Gap jungle, the migrants turn themselves in to the Panamanian military police. The police register them and get them to government camps for food, medicine and rest. Then with Western Union money transfers, the government gives them permits to legally be in-country long enough to leave the country heading North. Costa Rican repeat the catch, rest and release, and send them on to the Nicaraguan border.

Then you have all the tech companies who want lots of H-1B workers imported because they are cheaper than our own tech graduates, and can’t afford to complain. If you can find anyone who is thinking primarily of the good of the country, let me know. The majority of our Hispanic citizens, according to polls, favored sending the DACA kids back home. The current problem has nothing to do with our immigrant ancestors, the placque on the base of the Statue of Liberty, CIS also has interviews with migrants in Costa Rica from Iran. Bangladesh, and Pakistan all en route to the U.S. Border. This is all far more complicated than most of us recognize.